Quoted from jsa:I have a special request. I've owned and partially restored/maintained my TOM for many years. I've taken apart the armature/trap door mechanical assembly a thousand times. I've never found an adequate solution to eliminating the eventual pop-out-straight-down-the-middle issue. New armatures, weaker coils, it's been one continuous, losing battle!
I'd love to see what you do in your restoration to this assembly, and what tricks you might have to avoiding this problem (shared with many TOM owners).
This issue is common on TOM along with a couple others.
The core of it is within the design of the game and the entire Trap door mech
It can’t be fully solved on each and every kick out because there is no way to reaim the entire assembly
The reason is that it is all assembled within one steel plate.
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That steel plate mounts to the playfield with Several screws. Of those three different non adjustable points tied to post and two t nuts. image (resized).jpg
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The only real chance I can see of redirecting the kickout would be slotting or enlarging the holes of that base in those areas.
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Doing that may give some ability to tweak the direction of the kickout.
Another thought would be to install washers under those points to give a slight pitch and *maybe* slightly alter the way it ejects.
This are my observations of the assembly and potential problems with adjusting it.
There are some mechs,shots and features of many games that are honestly just found to be flawed by design and this may be one of them.
IJ mode start bounce outs,TZ divertor dumps, and many more come to mind. Some can be solved others improved but I will pay close attention to this one and see if I can possibly make any reliable improvements.